The Airport

36 days, 12 hours, and 13 minutes. That’s how long it has been since the moment I swallowed the lump in my throat, squeezed my eyes shut and willed the stinging tears to stay put, knowing that if I allowed one to escape, they might never stop. I could feel the heat rising from my chest, up my neck, and into my cheeks as the splotchy red spots took over. My skin felt tight, almost itchy, and I could sense my nose beginning to swell. This always happens when I get emotional. I could also feel the eyes of everyone in the airport watching me. Wondering where I was going, why I was alone. I wondered if they could read my mind and feel the humiliation eating me alive as tried to catch my breath. It reminded me of three days before, as I poured my heart out to two strangers on that late night flight. Sharing far too many details of my long-distance love story, desperately trying to calm my nerves. Yet here I stood now, in the same airport. I was filled with regret. I had dreamed for six years of seeing his face again, feeling his arms around me, watching the twinkle in his eye, that look of pure adoration brought about by every word I spoke.

I remember when I was a teen and my sister told me she was terrified of owls because some cultures believe they are messengers of death, while others believe witches disguise themselves in order to administer devastation to unsuspecting victims. That’s the memory that carried my mind away while I sat on the porch of his cabin. A barn owl appeared more interested than I as he sat beside me, while I sipped lukewarm coffee, and he asked me what I expected from him. I tried to focus on forming an answer that wouldn’t make things worse. I expected him to fall in love with me all over again, to be reminded of the reason he couldn’t let go all those years ago. To be overcome with the same feelings that caused him to pick up the phone a year after he moved away and tell me that leaving me was the biggest mistake he had ever made, and he would do anything to fix it, even moving to Texas. But, he didn’t. I expected to get a happily ever after, a fairy tale ending. But, I didn’t. So, I put on my best casual, laid-back smile, and told him that I expected nothing. I just wanted to see him. We then spent the next half hour under the watchful eye of the barn owl, while I lied. I told him that we didn’t make sense together, that loving someone for six years whom you have no intention of ever being with is crazy and pointless. I lied about every thought and feeling that I claimed to have about our relationship, except for one thing…after this weekend, he would never hear from me again.

I sat in the airport, feeling my heart beat throughout every inch of my body, pulsing in my fingertips and my head. The seconds ticked by as I stared at my phone, willing it to ring. Please. The last text he sent me had a simple message. He wasn’t coming. I would never see him again, and I would get no proper goodbye. That’s when I heard them call my boarding number, time was up, it was over.

It’s been over a month now. I haven’t heard a word from him since, just the deafening silence of my empty house. I still drag myself out of bed each morning. The smell of coffee often takes me back to that day, that conversation, that owl. I let a few tears fall before I wipe my face dry and float through my day, and meaningless conversations, like an apparition feeling nothing as it floats seamlessly through walls and bodies. The only way I even know I’m alive is when the bitter taste of my 2pm coffee jolts me back with the sudden and painful sting of that memory.

The simulator unplugs violently. The beeping of the machines is deafening as the salt of my tears burn my cheeks. I’ve done it again. Trial 17: failed. I created this simulator to bring an end to depression and heartbreak, to give people the power to transform their lives and create their own happiness. I created it so that I could escape the pain. It shouldn’t be this hard, I worked for years to perfect it. You follow your heart. You don’t have to think, you don’t have to do. You just exist, and your heart will find its truest happiness and create it. So, why do I always end up back there? In Idaho, at the airport, then back to my empty life without him. It’s as if I’m trapped, as if the curious eyes of the barn owl really did bring death of some kind. I couldn’t bare another minute, I had to go away again, I had to try. I told my assistant to plug it in again, and then leave. I didn’t want to be rescued this time, I didn’t want to come back to this reality. I slipped away again, slowly and then quickly, and suddenly I was back there at the airport, in the only reality I now knew existed. The heat began to rise up from my chest, the tears began to sting my eyes. And I had hope. Hope that I would hear from him again someday. Hope that things would get better, that I could find happiness again, somehow.